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Anyone reading China’s official press lately might be forgiven for thinking the whole country is in an earthquake zone.

Liberation Army Daily

A screenshot shows Sunday’s commentary in the Liberation Army Daily cautioning soldiers to stay clear of rumors and heed Chinese President Hu Jintao.

On Thursday, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper People’s Daily ran a front page commentary repeating a refrain about the need to continue “seeking progress with stability” and linking this to the upcoming Communist Party Congress. The commentary, entitled “Confidently Welcoming the 18th Party Congress,” it made clear that there was more work to be done — and by the way, let’s keep things steady — ahead of a once-a-decade leadership change in the fall. It concluded with another important point – the need to rally round Communist Party chief Hu Jintao.

That was hardly the first time Beijing hit on the theme of “seeking progress with stability,” which increasingly appears to be the flavor of the year.

On Saturday, the People’s Daily left out any reference to the Party Congress but it made it clear that stability was this year’s key objective. It called for stable prices, stable economic growth and social stability. It called on readers to stand together around — guess who? — the party’s general secretary, Hu Jintao.

The official media has been unusually insistent on the need to support Hu Jintao in the run-up to the transition, making it clear he calls the shots until the Party Congress later this year when he hands the baton to his successor, widely expected to be Vice President Xi Jinping.

Left unmentioned in all this is one possible bone of contention within the party – the ousting of Chongqing’s former party leader Bo Xilai – an event has given rise to an avalanche of unsubstantiated rumors about party discord in recent weeks and that led to a temporary clamp down on China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging services, known in Mandarin as weibo.

The unity theme has been voiced even more forcefully in the flagship military paper, the Liberation Army Daily, which has been sending out a steady stream of reminders to its uniformed readers that they owe allegiance to the ruling party.

The paper has been firing away with a barrage of commentaries, noting that the armed forces must stand firmly behind the Communist Party and the party chief. On Thursday, it reprinted a commentary the title of which left little room for guessing: “Ensuring that the Armed Forces Resolutely Obey the Party Center, the Central Military Commission and Party Secretary Hu Jintao.”

The Liberation Army Daily carried the same message on Sunday, only at greater length, repeating a standard slogan: “The party controls the gun.”

The Sunday commentary (in Chinese) was even more explicit about where the threats to stability might lie: “Western enemies” have been using political, ideological, cultural and religious means to “infiltrate” China and they have been using “all kinds of means to take advantage of problems encountered in our development to stir up trouble,” said the commentary on Sunday.

It reminded the rank and file not to listen, believe in or repeat rumors. It went on to say how this was particularly important in an age of weibo and text messages when the military needs to be particularly vigilant. All the more reason for the military to heed the call of the party – and in particular Hu Jintao.